International Journal of Education and Information Studies.

ISSN 2277-3169 Volume 2, Number 1 (2012), pp. 9-14

© Research India Publications
http://www.ripublication.com/ijeis.htm

Implications of Social Networking Sites in Modern

Environment

Pritam Chattopadhyay and Archana M. Deshpande

Asst. Professors, MIT School of Telecom Management,

MIT College Campus, Pune, India
E-mail: pritam@mitsot.com, archana@mitsot.com

Abstract

Over the years lots of plans have been developed in a number of ways to
involve students in campus life, inside and outside the campus with proper and
constructive intentions from most of the college managements. One of the
initiatives, under this task, is a printed book or a booklet which contains
photographs and relevant information about incoming students. The main idea
behind this is to help students navigate in a new and unknown environment.
Now – a – days the communication environment of colleges has become very
complex, as students combine the use of electronic mail, open forums, chat
rooms, Instant Messenger and social networking sites etc. In the last few
years, some web sites such as MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, Facebook have
expanded heavily. This is the core concept of online social networking (OSN)
which enables and assists students to communicate with friends, initiate
friendships, join groups, and locate people of similar interests. With addition
to all these activities, OSN is used and executed as an efficient approach to get
admission and retain the already established student body at the college
campuses, to promote various activities and events of the colleges, and to
strengthen relationship with the governing bodies. This paper focuses on the
implications of Social Networking Sites and how management of the colleges
are responding to OSN and integrating OSN into their strategy for all
communication purposes. Applications mentioned are of OSN sites used by
the management of the college to communicate with students, potential
students, alumni, and other key stakeholders involved in the modern era.

Keywords: Social network, Online Social Networking (OSN),

Communication environment
10 Pritam Chattopadhyay and Archana M. Deshpande

Introduction
Way back in 1995, when social networking was unheard of, Classmates Inc. created
classmates.com, an on-line community based networking site for members to connect
with their friends from school and work. Our cluttered technological and media
environment affects almost all of us on a daily basis, yet no where has the impact of
new media innovation been more evident than on college campuses where the
Millennial, individuals born between 1981 and 2000, remain unaware of what life
before the Internet entailed. In addition to courses being taught completely online or
supplemented with web-based applications, universities and colleges have adapted
pedagogy to benefit today’s learners—a techno-savvy generation who expect to be
connected to professors and peers at all times (Baird & Fisher, 2006). Perhaps the
most astounding technological development on campuses in the last five years
involves the innovation of online social network sites, public Web sites specifically
developed to promote socialization. Sites such as Orkut, LinkedIn and Facebook—
considered the premiere site at the college level—enable students to communicate
with friends, initiate friendships, join groups, and locate people with similar interests.
They differ from other online networking opportunities, such as instant messaging,
chatrooms, and electronic blackboards, found on campuses in that the sites are a
public online gathering point rather than a closed site constructed in relationship to a
course or a particular program of study.
As information and communication technologies are developing a rapidly
advancing history of technological innovations, the past, present and future of
students’ associations and communication are indistinguishable from the various
technologies that were and are available. From electronic mail and newsgroups, from
open forums to open chat rooms, from Instant Messenger to social networking sites,
the prevailing technologies partially define the structure and content of social
communication and association. Furthermore, young people's communication
environment has become increasingly complex, as the different technologies listed
above are used simultaneously.
Over the years college administrators have developed a number of ways to involve
students in campus life. One such mechanism many colleges and universities have
historically utilized is a printed a “facebook,” a booklet containing photographs and
information about incoming students, in order to help students learn about their peers
and identify potential friends as they navigate in a new environment. Online social
networking sites, though, have not only served a similar function, but also they are
emerging as an innovative approach to recruitment and retention of the student body,
promotion of activities and events, and strengthening ties to the colleges.

Sociological Viewpoint
From a sociological viewpoint, Mesch (2007) has argued that an important motivation
for participation in online communities (forums and chat rooms) is social
diversification. Societies are characterized by varying levels of social segregation. In
societies that reward individuals differentially according to income, prestige, ethnicity
Implications of Social Networking Sites in Modern Environment 11

and power, stratification systems result in a differential ability of individuals to gain

access to jobs and residential locations. As a result, individual social associations tend
to be with individuals of similar social characteristics such as age, gender, marital
status, ethnicity, religion, and nationality. Studies on the formation, development,
maintenance, and dissolution of close social relationships have emphasized the
importance of network homophily (McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2002) . Social
similarity in the social network is the result of the opportunity structure for interaction
that emerges from the social structuring of activities in society. Feld (1981) used the
concept of foci of activity, defining them as “social, psychological, legal or physical
objects around which joint activities are organized.” Whether they are formal (school)
or informal (regular hangouts), large (neighborhood) or small (household), foci of
activity systematically constrain choices of friends. From this perspective, association
with others is the result of a two-step process: foci of activity place individuals in
proximity (for example, they provide opportunities for frequent meetings), which
causes individuals to reveal themselves to each other. Specifically, people tend to
choose their friends from the set of people available through these foci.
The Internet as a focus of activity becomes an institutional arrangement that
brings individuals together in repeated interactions around the focal activities. In this
sense, as many societies are ethnically and racially segregated, chat rooms and forums
provide a space of interaction in which teens are exposed to others of different ethnic
origin and can discuss different family practices and different perspectives on history,
and can interact with others based on common interests and topics without the barrier
that race and ethnicity imposes in everyday life (Tynes, 2007). A study that compared
racial and ethnically related comments and stereotypes in two youth chat rooms found
reference to these primordial categories in the discussions, but the number of racial
remarks online seemed lower than in everyday life. Furthermore, a more positive
approach and openness to members of other ethnic groups was found in chat rooms in
which the discussion was moderated (Subrahmanyan & Greenfield, 2008). These
studies indicate support for the diversification perspective, and for the view that chat
rooms and forums organized around specific topics and interests tend to support the
development of friendship across ethnic and racial lines; this is an important
development in highly residentially segregated societies.

Process
Participation in chat rooms and forums is often motivated by the need for specific and
round-the-clock social support. Online support groups differ in the degree of
involvement of professionals. Some have a professional moderator, others lack any
moderator. But the common characteristics are that members are youth with a shared
condition such as hearing impairment, diabetes, recovery from cancer, sexual abuse,
or pregnancy, who assemble to cope with their condition through sharing knowledge
and providing mutual support (Mesch, 2006).
This type of communities attracts interest mainly because social support is
deemed to require the exchange of verbal and non-verbal messages conveying
emotion, information, and advice on reducing uncertainty or stress associated with the
12 Pritam Chattopadhyay and Archana M. Deshpande

condition. Social support is exchanged through computer-mediated communication in

relatively large networks of individuals who do not know each other and do not
communicate face to face. Also, non-geographic computer-mediated social support
communities develop among strangers whose primary connection is sharing a concern
over a source of personal discomfort. Social support online is available day and night.
As the Internet is a global communication technology the likelihood of finding social
support when needed, at any time of the day, is high. An important characteristic of
online social support communities is that a very narrow and specific topic is defined,
and this attracts individuals who when joining tend to identity themselves as having
the particular problem or concern.
An obvious advantage for online social support is its avoidance of the
embarrassment that ordinarily follows the voicing of personal and intimate problems
in face-to-face relations. Online social support also facilitates interaction
management, namely taking time to elaborate and write thoughts online (Walther &
Boyd, 2002). These three characteristics, shared identity, anonymity, and interaction
management, provide an ideal context for social support (Turner, Grube & Myers,
2001; Walther & Boyd, 2002).

Instant Messaging and Social Networking

Instant messaging and social networking sites differ from other online communication
channels in a variety of characteristics. The adoption of the technology is social, as it
results from a group of friends settling on a particular IM or social networking
system. IM is adopted because of peer pressure that helps to create a critical mass of
users in a social group. Today, for adolescents to be part of a peer group they must
engage in perpetual communication online after school hours. Those who do not
cannot be part of the peer group. Not being online or not having an IM user name
means exclusion from most of the daily social interaction. Using IM requires having
an active list of buddies and being on a friends' list by the authorization of peers. In
that sense, the use of IM with strangers is uncommon as its appeal is mainly to
existing friends.
While chat rooms and forums are technologies that link individuals around a
shared topic of interest and concern, Instant Messenger, text messaging and social
networking sites are technologies that link teens that have some knowledge of each
other and belong to the same social circle or to the social circle of their friends.
Compared with other communication channels such as email, forums and chat
rooms, IM has unique features. It is synchronous communication, mostly one-to-one
or one-to-many. IM chatters enjoy real-time conversations and have a short spell to
think before replying. Users are aware of other users' online presence, and can choose
to communicate to others and communicate their status (online, offline, away or
busy). The application allows multitasking, namely to perform other tasks and chat at
the same time. A blocking mechanism allows users to remove themselves from
another user's list or remove a friend from the list. At the same time, users are not able
to communicate with others who are not enrolled with the same provider.
Implications of Social Networking Sites in Modern Environment 13

Conclusion
This paper reviewed current studies on young people's use of different types of social
media. The most important conclusion is that the new social media have important
implications for the understanding of adolescence. Youth face a media environment
and conduct their social interactions using multiple channels of communication.
Adolescents that have not access to the Internet very rapidly find themselves at a
disadvantage, with the risk of being excluded from the most significant social
activities of the peer group and access to information. At the theoretical level, theories
of youth friendship formation and adolescence need to incorporate this emerging
digital divide that affects the opportunities and impact of digitally based exclusion in
peer groups.
Second, for adolescents that do have access, different motivations shape their
choices of technologies and the different choices have different outcomes. The need
to expand the social network and to diversify entail greater use of forums and chat
rooms, which results in diversification and increase of network size; but this is at the
expense of closeness to face-to-face friends, at least in the short run. The need to be
highly involved with the face-to-face peer group and to increase belonging drives the
use of IM, SMS and social networking sites, resulting in a higher perceived closeness
to members of the peer group, and greater ability to coordinate joint activities.

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